TECH CRUNCH – Ten days after Apollo Global completed its acquisition of Yahoo (formerly Verizon Media) from Verizon for $5B, it has appointed Jim Lanzone, the current CEO of Tinder (for 14 months) as the new CEO of Yahoo. Renate Nyborg, Tinder's head of EMEA, is taking the CEO role at Tinder. Nyborg is young but has a long track record in tech, at Headspace, Apple (subscriptions & developer relations), and building her own startups. Her connection to Tinder is personal. "I swiped right on my husband and it changed my life…. We are building the most fun, inclusive, safest place for singles to connect… We're…raising the bar for the industry."
Category: Outlets – Tech Crunch
Match Beta Test Targets Dating App Complaints
TECH CRUNCH – Aug 10 – Today Match introduces features addressing user complaints like how much time it takes to find a relevant match and ghosting. An anti-ghosting feature will push users to either continue a conversation or unmatch the recipient instead of leaving them hanging.
"Matched by Us," is a new recommendation system that presents one, free match a week. Users see each other and don't wait for a "like" back to engage in a conversation. Match has been internally testing adding human curation to suggestions, an actual match-making service. "Right now, human curation is one area that we're really excited about and want to crack," CPO Dushyant Saraph said. The new features are rolling out to Match's U.S. userbase in beta, as the company kicks off a new brand campaign targeting adult daters.
Match Group have 15m paying customers across its brands, up from 13m YOY. Quarterly revenue was $708m, with net income of $141m. Match Group plans to add audio and video chat, including live video, to its dating brand portfolio. Match's dating app is among those that will benefit from Hyperconnect integrations as Match explores "building out live experiences."
by Sarah Perez
See full article at Tech Crunch
Mark Brooks: Putting the people back into personals. The future of dating apps is 'live'. Match experimented with matchmakers under CEO Jim Safka, bought a 20% stake in Chinese hybrid matchmaking service Zhenai in 2011, and flirted with Three Day Rule in 2014. eHarmony also experimented with a brand extension into live high-end matchmaking in 2013.
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Match Group to Add Audio and Video Chat, Including Group Live Video
SwoonMe Dating App Uses Avatars and Audio
TECH CRUNCH – July 8 – SwoonMe aims to fix the problem with superficial dating apps, where users primarily make decisions based on how someone looks. Instead of swiping through profiles, SwoonMe's idea is to use a combination of avatars and audio to encourage users to connect based on someone's personality. To use the app, users take a selfie which SwoonMe converts into an avatar. They then record a voice clip to tell others about themselves and what they're looking for in a partner. The idea for SwoonMe comes from Tanvi Gupta, a former Facebook product specialist who was involved with a number of high-profile products, including those that shipped in Messenger and in Instagram Direct, such as Messenger reactions, a Messenger redesign, chat heads on Android, and more. Currently, SwoonMe is targeting the dating markets of San Francisco and L.A., but is open to anyone who wants to try it. The startup is a small team and currently working to raise $1M in seed funding.
Consumer Spending on Apps Hit Record $64.9B in First Half of 2021
TECH CRUNCH – July 1 – Consumer spending in mobile apps hit a record $64.9B during the H1 of 2021, according to Sensor Tower. This figure represents a 24.8% YOY increase in spending seen across both the App Store and Google Play. Apple's App Store accounted for $41.5B in global consumer spending during the H1 of 2021, or 1.8x the $23.4B seen by Google Play. TikTok remained a top grossing app, followed by YouTube and Tinder.
by Sarah Perez
See full article at Tech Crunch
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Dating App Thursday Raises $3.5M
TECH CRUNCH – June 28 – Thursday, a dating app that only works on Thursdays, has raised a £2.5M (~$3.5M) seed investment, a few months after launching in May in London and New York. Last Thursday (June 17) it says that 110K likes were sent, resulting in 7,500 matches in a single day. The app opens for usage at 00.01 each Thursday morning so swiping is compressed into a few hours. All matches and conversations vanish at midnight. Hence users are pushed to act quickly. Matches are also limited to x10 people a day. The plan for the seed funding includes hiring a head of growth and a head of marketing, in addition to other senior roles and a number of tech hires – and coming up with what they dub as a "six figure marketing strategy".
by Natasha Lomas
See full article at Tech Crunch
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com
Facebook’s Use of Ad Data Triggers Antitrust Probes in UK and EU
TECH CRUNCH – June 7 – The U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the EU's Competition Commission both announced formal investigations into Facebook's operations. The competition regulators will scrutinize how Facebook uses data from advertising customers and users of its single sign-on tool – specifically looking at whether it uses this data as an unfair lever against competitors in markets such as classified ads. In a statement on its action, CMA CEO Andrea Coscelli said: "We intend to thoroughly investigate Facebook's use of data to assess whether its business practices are giving it an unfair advantage in the online dating and classified ad sectors. Any such advantage can make it harder for competing firms to succeed, including new and smaller businesses, and may reduce customer choice."
Tinder Finally Adds a Block Contacts Feature
TECH CRUNCH – June 7 – Tinder users can upload their phone contacts to select certain people that they'd rather not see on the app, whether that's an ex, a co-worker or a family member. According to a survey commissioned by Tinder, 40% of people have found an ex-partner on the app, 24% have encountered a family member and one in 10 have even encountered their professor. Tinder tested the Block Contacts feature in India, Korea and Japan, reporting that members who used the feature blocked about a dozen people on average.
Tinder Tested Group Video Chat
TECH CRUNCH – June 2 – "Tinder Mixer" allows users to join group video chats and play games with others nearby. The feature was tested for a short period of time last year in New Zealand, but will not be launching.
Meet Schmooze, a Meme-Based Dating App
TECH CRUNCH – May 26 – Schmooze combines machine learning and memes to connect people based on humor algorithm. A beta test in late summer with 200 Stanford students has since led to 10K downloads around the country. Currently ~200 memes are added each day, while others are deleted. 90K matches have been made to date. It recently closed on $270K in seed funding from Ulu Ventures and others to tinker with its product.
by Connie Loizos
See full article at Tech Crunch
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com